We’ve spoken a couple times about the effect Google’s acquisition of Motorola Mobility will have on the company’s future smartphones, often in the context of the rumored Motorola X phone. The official word has been that when Google took control last year, Motorola already had a twelve to eighteen month pipeline of products that were already in development, meaning it wouldn’t be until sometime later this year at the earliest before Google’s influence would really start making an appreciable impact. Now Google’s CFO is bringing up the subject again, and he’s got some less than glowing things to say about all those in-development models.

CFO and Senior VP Patrick Pichette was the same exec who gave us that earlier account of the backlog, and today he’s dropping that 12 month bit and making it clear that Motorola already had 18 months of devices in development when Google acquired it – that pushes our first chance to see Google-inspired Motorola gear out a little farther.

Pichette was remarkably candid in his comments at a Morgan Stanley conference, explaining, “Motorola has a great set of products, but they’re not really like ‘wow’ by Google standards. Dennis Woodside and his team have inherited 18 months of pipeline that we have to drain right now.”

Sure, Google may have some high standards, but that’s a borderline disparaging way to talk about a company your employer just sunk a whole boatload of money into. Should we be dialing-back our expectations for just what the X phone will be capable of?